“If you don't change direction, you may end up where you are headed.”

Featuring Charles Eisenstein, Directed & Edited by Ian McKenzie

As you may have heard, I recently presented a workshop at the ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture with a colleague/ friend named Joy Kuebler. Over 20 years of designing public spaces, she developed a fun, unique and effective process of…

My current musing:

What does it mean to “deserve” something? Do we deserve where we are born, or what we are given? Do some people deserve to be wealthy and others deserve to be poor?

The more I think about…

We all are on a journey, and the journey takes us places we never imagined... And when we think we want to step into the world to serve, and serve in a role of leading, we may find that the…

So I recently returned from the annual Landscape Architecture Conference, and I now know that Halloween weekend in Minneapolis is a Thing! I also learned a bit about how your internal attitude changes your world.

The conference is driven by…

It's not what I asked for, but I'm finding myself learning to navigate all this space that has opened up in my new life without a pup to hospice. One thing that's oh so tempting is to just mindlessly fill…

This week I gave Carla her final trip to the vet.

I had to make an appointment to euthanize her, so I knew Monday was her last walk by the creek, her last meal, her last day of rolling in…

Happy New Year!  Although I am not Jewish, I love celebrating all new beginnings. It's a chance to reflect on how we got here, release whatever is holding us back, and to reset our compass for where we'd like to…

Sometimes the obstacle that's keeping you from moving forward is behind you. It's an anchor, keeping you in place despite efforts to move, change, or flow.

I realized recently that what was challenging me was myself… holding on to my…

Can you feel it? The planets are in retrograde!

Retrograde means the planet appears to move backwards in the sky, as earth passes it on our orbit around the sun.

I say I don't really believe in astrology, but…

Living in a body with RA has taught me a lot about the limits of force and the usefulness of surrender. 

I used to think surrender meant losing, failure, quitting, a total collapse of will and effort… something to be…

So what do you do when things don't go according to plan?

I couldn't get the help I was counting on for installing 300 sq. ft. of Saltillo tile on my new floor, and my experience installing this uniquely Mexican…

I saw this on a protest sign this morning. The protest was in the next town over, in Manlius, NY, which is 15 minutes from my home.

1^st Response:  feeling the wave of shock and fear crawl through…

Contrary to what most folks think, listening is not a passive intellectual exercise. It's an active, embodied skill, that get easier with practice. 

Our culture values talking over listening. We attend to those who speak up, we praise those who…

Sometimes I find myself thinking about all the stuff I need that I don't have, or feeling like I'm lacking, or impoverished, and that I need more. I call this scarcity thinking.

The idea of scarcity is what drives the…

The last few weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster, as I am in the process of building my little 24' x 30' dream house! 

From one moment to the next I oscillate from completely thrilled and delighted, to panic and…

Today I was contemplating how many Me's there are.

As a kid, I remember carrying a lot of Me's around. I had the Spanish speaking me at home, and the English speaking American me at school. I had the graceful…

The world is changing around us at an alarmingly fast rate. 20 years ago, I was drawn to landscape architecture because I believed through this discipline, I could help protect nature and connect people to the environment and each other.…

We've all heard this, and I think, deep inside, we know this is truth - but it's hard to live it when we are immersed so completely in our modern culture which functions on separating everything. It’s how we speak…

The mind and body are an integrated mobius strip which influence one another. How we move changes how we think, and recent neuroscience explains this interconnection in ever increasing clarity. As designers, we can integrate this information into our professional…

Sometimes internal work goes external, and vice versa. I tend to focus on individual development and self-care, but lately it's systemic change that has been occupying my thoughts, because the internal and the external are not so different. [More on…